Car Bombs Kill 16 in Baghdad; 5 Soldiers Killed in Attacks

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 2 Â Two car bombs detonated in quick succession this evening near a crowded market in eastern Baghdad, killing at least 16 people and wounding 90 in one of the worst attacks in the capital in weeks.

The first car, parked on a street near a gas station in the Ameen district, exploded at about 5:40 p.m. local time, Interior Ministry officials said. In a grimly familiar tactic, a second car bomb detonated outside a crowded market nearby about 10 minutes later, as police officers and emergency workers were flooding the area.

Most of the dead and wounded appear to have been civilians shopping for food or on their way home, the officials said.

The bombings came on a day of mayhem across Iraq, with fires raging on an oil pipeline in the north after an insurgent mortar attack. More than three dozen people were reported by American and Iraqi officials to have died in violent incidents.

American military officials also announced the deaths of five service members. Three were soldiers who died when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle south of Baghdad today. A fourth soldier was killed Wednesday after being struck by small arms fire in southwestern Baghdad, and a marine was killed in combat on Wednesday near Falluja, west of the capital.

Testimony continued today in the trial of Saddam Hussein without any of the eight defendants present, after the chief judge barred them all from the courtroom for disruptive behavior. Mr. Hussein, who had apparently refused to attend the trial on Wednesday, watched the proceedings on closed-circuit television with some other defendants, said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak for attribution.

In the latest of a series of gruesome discoveries, Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled bodies of 14 young men today in a ditch in eastern Baghdad, their hands bound, their eyes blindfolded. The men's identities could not yet be determined, Interior Ministry officials said. On Tuesday, 11 bodies were found in western Baghdad.

Some Shiite officials responded angrily after a predawn raid today by American forces in Sadr City, a run-down Shiite district in Baghdad, that left one woman dead and five people wounded. It was the first serious violence for some time in Sadr City, where fighting raged in 2004 between American forces and militiamen loyal to the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

The incident began shortly after 1 a.m. when men on a roof fired at an American helicopter that was taking part in a raid to capture a militant associated with Ansar al-Sunna, a terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for numerous bombings and beheadings, said Tech. Sgt. Stacey Simon, a military spokeswoman. The helicopter fired back with missiles and small arms, she said.

Two people were detained in the raid, she added, but she did not specify whether the Ansar al-Sunna member was one of them.

At a news conference to report on talks on the new Iraqi government, several Shiite officials protested the raid, with some calling it an effort to isolate Mr. Sadr's substantial bloc of followers in the new Parliament.

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"The occupation forces have no right to violate the sovereignty of Iraq or to kill our people," said Baha al-Araji, a Shiite member of the National Assembly who belongs to Mr. Sadr's political movement.

Mr. Araji and other Shiite officials have been meeting to discuss the new government, including nominees for prime minister and other top positions.

Interior Ministry officials said an American military patrol also opened fire on a minibus just south of Baghdad today, killing two people inside and wounding seven others. American military spokesmen said they had no report of the incident.

Also in Baghdad, Mary Hamza al-Rubaie, a general manager in the Ministry of Industry, was kidnapped by gunmen as she left her house in the Yarmouk district, Interior Ministry officials said.

In Kirkuk, spokesmen for the Northern Oil Company said all oil operations had been halted after the mortar attacks early today, which struck a processing plant and caused enormous fires both on adjoining pipelines and on crude oil storage tanks. No one was injured in the attack, company officials said.

"This is the first attack of this kind on the compound since the fall of the regime, because it is very close to a power station and is secured by fences and surveillance aircraft around the clock," said Abdul Aziz Mahmoud, a Northern Oil engineer. The extent of the damage has not yet been estimated, he said.

In Mr. Hussein's trial, two male witnesses described being tortured in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Mr. Hussein in Dujail village in 1982.

Most other witnesses have said they were tortured by Baathist officials, without giving direct evidence of involvement by Mr. Hussein and his associates. But one of the two witnesses today, speaking from behind a curtain, said he had been tortured by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein's half-brother and one of the lead defendants.

After the two men testified, Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman adjourned the trial until Feb. 13, apparently seeking to bring the defendants Â and possibly their lawyers, who walked out on Sunday Â back into the courtroom.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Khalid al-Ansary, Omar al-Neami and Ali Adeeb from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of the New York Times from Kirkuk.